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This is the catch-all for discussion around Giant Bomb, it's content, personalities etc. It started as a thread to talk about Whiskey Media introducing premium memberships way back in the day but now it's just for talking about Giant Bomb.

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Original post

So, what most people thought was going to happen has happened. Whiskey Media (owners of Giant Bomb, Screened, Tested, Comic Vine and Anime Vice) are implementing a paid membership program. This kind of makes me sad, not so much because it's happening so much as it's pretty clear from what they were saying between the lines on the preview podcast that this is because their business model hasn't been working out and they need the money. It's $5/month or $45/year but I don't know if you really get all that much for it:

- No ads for yearly members only (there's very few if any now anyway.)
- HD Flash videos (which are a myth, they're never true HD) and the ability to download any videos (maybe useful to some but useless to me.)
- Access to their new HTML5 mobile site.
- Site avatar award.
- T-shirt for yearly subscribers.
- Access to a live show they're thinking about doing and other added features, none of which were defined or have a timeline.- Full Bombcast access. The show is being split into two one hour segments. Only subscribers get it all on release week, others will get the first hour the week of release and the rest the following week.

I really love Giant Bomb and what those guys do over there but if I'm honest, this doesn't sound like a great value for someone on the tight budget I am. I think splitting up the Bombcast is a colossal mistake that will severely splinter their audience and I'm not much on the idea of paying for stuff that may come but no one knows what it is or when. This kind of sounds like it was written by a marketing executive. On the other hand, I really want to support the content I like and if it's either this or have them start to have to take on obnoxious advertising like you see on GameTrailers and the like, it might be worth at least trying the monthly one. What are other Giant Bomb fans thinking?

The Giantbomb guys are great, love the podcast, love using their site for achievement tracking, love the quick looks, and I check the site daily. However, I can't justify spending money on such a thing. I simply can't give to every quality podcast I listen to. When you start asking for regular monthly commitments, count me out, which is why I've never played WOW. I'm torn. I'd love to support them, and it's great to see them expanding (I love Tested and Will, but have never liked biased reviewer Norm--hello pc gamer), but they're trying an archaic subscription model that I don't think works for most people. I'll gladly give $10-$20 a year, but can't commit to $45-50.

I listen to the Bombcast and the Conference Call. At GWJ I feel like a part of the community. At Giantbomb I feel like a dude looking at a website. That's why I would donate all I could spare to GWJ in lieu of subscribing to Giantbomb. It's not any fault of the Bombcasters, it's just the nature of the beast. I wish them the best of luck.

“No matter how rich you are, you can still only drink 16 or 17 liters of beer a day.”

I put in $50 mostly as compensation for having watched their Endurance Run stuff for free; I'm going to immediately cancel the auto-renewal and see what the situation is if/when that time comes. The way I look at it, it's basically a donation drive, and I do on occasion like to watch videos on my iPod when I'm going to sleep so the mobile site does seem appealing.

It is regrettable that the community there is kinda horrible, though. It tends to undercut all the cool social features.

I've easily enjoyed $50 worth of content from GB. Unfortunately, I don't agree with cost or their very short-minded decision to split up the cast. For instance, they didn't mention the 5k member deal until the community could speak. It screams being kicked by accounting or just not understanding good community practices, oddly unlike their past behavior. Money talks, I guess.

I just can't justify paying that price. I have no use for the mobile app. I don't think the medal icon or shirt are compelling at all, design-wise. The live show could be a great return to On the Spot/1up Show. HD is the only thing I really want. I've gotten so accustomed to HD content that GB videos look years old.

Since their live show was a telethon anyway, I would've preferred to see a pure donation drive. Then afterwards take the mode donation, if acceptable, and make that the base membership price.

GL to them. I want to see what I think is easily some of the best content out there thrive, but I can't support (not that it makes sense for me) unthoughtful decisions.

"Duke Nukem Forever's switch from Quake II to Unreal technology took six weeks, but it will ultimately save months of development time."
@Holysh*tMatt

Again, not sure yet. Frankly, I am considering it for better smartphone access. You looking at this Certis?

I am concerned about delaying half the podcast. Games are so time specific, even a week can be a world of change say in October, November, December or around convention times. And it seems a bit extreme. Why not a Diggnation approach where the free version is delayed until the weekend but subscribers get the content Monday?

Considering that my lady friend and I are discussing the possibility of starting up a web site that would rely largely on donations for operating expenses, I have a lot of sympathy for anyone trying to make this sort of freemium model work.

SCANDALOUS!

Also, I did the $5 thing to try and kick them over 5k subs to keep the bombcast free. I agree with most of the sentiment in this thread. I donate to many podcasts to support them and I consider this the same, but I have no use for any of the other functionality at all. Also, how will my iTunes feed know I'm a subscriber? That's one part of the equation I'm confused about. It would be a hassle to download every show manually, if it came to that.

I bought a year membership because I like Screened, Tested, and Giant Bomb quite a bit. There are alternatives for this sort of coverage but I like the video content and the personalities and have no problems giving a small(ish) company whose employees I enjoy watching/listening to some cash.

Also, I did the $5 thing to try and kick them over 5k subs to keep the bombcast free. I agree with most of the sentiment in this thread. I donate to many podcasts to support them and I consider this the same, but I have no use for any of the other functionality at all. Also, how will my iTunes feed know I'm a subscriber? That's one part of the equation I'm confused about. It would be a hassle to download every show manually, if it came to that.

One of them said on twitter this morning that it would be a new RSS/itunes feed. I know there are other paid podcasts that work, but I'm not sure how as I've never subscribed to one.

I remember reading an article on how paywalls usually don't work out too well. I mean, we're pretty serious gamers, and how many of us have a Gamespot Total Access or IGN Insider membership? Salon had one for a long, long, while, and the Wall Street Journal has one on the back of its newspaper, but has it ever worked for gaming?

As an aside, the fact that they're going the heavy bribe to get 5,000 members only is.... unsettling, which is a shame since those sites are some of the funniest on the ole net.

Yeah, the 5,000 member bribe/hostage situation is bizarre. I don't see how that precludes them from using the Bombcast as a carrot in another membership drive/whatever in the future. That's their biggest (and for most people, only?) bargaining chip. To give it away for potentially 5,000 $5 one shot membership cancellations (hypothetically speaking) seems to lack foresight.

I have some sympathy for what they're trying to accomplish. Like many of you guys, I don't visit the site proper a lot but I enjoy their podcast and I check in on the quick looks once in a while. I'll give them a year sub as a donation since I'm not too worried about the extra features. The tricky part is trying to monetize something that was normally free. Adding 720P video is great. No ads is good. Taking something like a normal weekly podcast and chopping it up is bad. Bad bad bad. Better to offer new features and rely on good will than try to pull things back because they're popular. Not dissimilar to what Sony is struggling with trying to monetize PSN more.

I can't talk numbers publicly, but the Bombcast is not actually worlds bigger than our show. I've heard their numbers second hand from someone I trust, so grain of salt there, but if what I'm told is right then they've got maybe a 30% larger podcast audience than we do. It's easy to look at those numbers and think "Damn, if everyone paid even $1 a month we could cover a couple salaries easy!"

But the Internet doesn't work that way. The GWJ donation drive has around 5% of the readership who actually donate. You'd better have a huge pool of readers for the math to make sense if you're going to make subscriptions and suffer the good will penalty from your audience. I hope they can make it work, but there's a reason all of the GWJ staff have jobs and work way too many hours

“Respect is one of the great treasures of being human, ennobling us, and opening us to love that nourishes our basic humanity.” ~ Roshi Joan Halifax

There's a 45 minute podcast up on GB called "Let's talk about memberships" that goes into more detail regarding the decisions they've made as far as monetizing half of the podcast for one week's time.

Basically they say that advertisers aren't willing to give real money to podcasts because there aren't good tracking methods for how many ears these advertisements reach. I personally download each podcast but usually listen to it more than once. Some people may download them and not listen at all.

This whole deal kinda reminds me of ESPN.com's membership program. I've been subscribed to that for a while, a bi-annual sub for full access to their articles and two magazines a month ringing up at $80 every two years. I get a lot more for my dollar at ESPN, but they're an effing huge company that probably doesn't need quite that much money from me. I'm at the end of my sixth year I think and I'm going to let my membership lapse. I find sportswriting infinitely more interesting than games writing, but the stuff they paywall isn't really worth it.

I had a point when I started writing that last paragraph, but lost it while straining the pasta. Damn.

Also, this whole splitting up the podcast thing into two segments has me wondering about the length. If you listen you know they usually clock in closer to 2:15 than 2. And what about the crazy 3.5 hour E3-casts?

Basically they say that advertisers aren't willing to give real money to podcasts because there aren't good tracking methods for how many ears these advertisements reach. I personally download each podcast but usually listen to it more than once. Some people may download them and not listen at all.

Don't I know it. It's funny to think you can have this super targeted, savvy audience right there and no one wants to invest because the advertisers don't know for sure how many people they reach. More to the point, if they have a game they want to pimp they're better off just making sure the crew wants to talk about it of their own volition.

“Respect is one of the great treasures of being human, ennobling us, and opening us to love that nourishes our basic humanity.” ~ Roshi Joan Halifax

One of them said on twitter this morning that it would be a new RSS/itunes feed. I know there are other paid podcasts that work, but I'm not sure how as I've never subscribed to one.

I was a subscriber of Jerry Doyle's (of Babylon 5 fame) political podcast for a few months. Basically, it's like any other website with a subscription but they give you a custom generated RSS feed for retrieving your content. You have to manually subscribe to the RSS feed in iTunes to get the podcasts to download automatically though. Worked pretty well but when I canceled my subscription, they wasted no time in shutting that feed down on the same day versus letting it run through the last few days I was subscribed.

"I'm... optimistic. I've always been against paying for online stuff, but the Whiskey content is something special and is one of two sites that have video game content that I go to anymore. I'll be subscribing for as long as the content stays good and fresh.

Don't screw this up guys. You have almost literally the entire community behind you, but we are all a bit wary of where things may go. Don't let it get to your heads."

I've already signed up for the yearly. It's a great site, and GiantBomb is the only other gaming site I go to beyond GWJ. As for the rest of the Whiskey group, well... I use Screened and Tested sparingly. I don't use ComicVine since I'm not a comic nerd, but I can say that Sara is hot.

As long as the Bombcast stays good I'll keep going. Sorry to say it, but that podcast has surpassed the Conference Call in quality. Both are good, though

We will see but I think it hurts alot of the goodwill to split up the bombcast like they were talking about, hopefully they get the 5000 subscribers to keep it together.

I still don't understand how 5,000 subscribers is the benchmark for them keeping the podcast as a single episode. That's just $25,000 a month (for possibly just a single month) and that's before any Paypal or other fees are applied. Maybe it's a marketing stunt but this doesn't exactly endear me to what they are trying to accomplish. It seems almost like a guilt trip...

And now I'm thinking about it and... I'm wondering if I might be talking myself into subscribing for one key reason. GB is one of the last sources of credible, independent gaming news on the Net. This is the first year in a while I should be able to donate to GWJ. I've been a member of The Escapist in the past. And other than the ultra-indies like Three Moves Ahead and Immortal Machines, what else is there? So, maybe I'm thinking it shouldn't be about the site & community but rather paying for the content that I appreciate.

*sigh*... They need a cheaper tier. Give me a subscription RSS feed w/o the website BS (which it sounded like in their "subscription podcast" was their biggest money drain) for their podcasts & maybe some videos for $2 a month and I'm sold. Make the cost invisible & the value to me high and I'll pay it. Medals, badges, Developer APIs, game specific forums? All that is already splatter across every video game website on the net already.

I certainly don't think their premium features are worth $50 a year. Then again, I don't think the PBS tote bag is really worth however much you have to give to get that. It's sort of not the point. I view it as a donation, not a purchase.

So yeah, I went ahead and signed up. Like many, I would've preferred a $25ish-dollar-a-year option, so I'm compromising: I donated my fifty and turned auto-renew off. I'll suffer through a year of split Bombcasts when it expires, and if the site is still going and I'm still enjoying it the year after next, I'll donate another $50 then.

Considering that my lady friend and I are discussing the possibility of starting up a web site that would rely largely on donations for operating expenses, I have a lot of sympathy for anyone trying to make this sort of freemium model work. Nobody's quite figured out the secret sauce yet, but I wholly support experiments in that direction, because some variation of this seems like the most workable way of making smaller sites like this work, especially if you're trying to make a living at it as opposed to doing it as a hobby.

Don't I know it. It's funny to think you can have this super targeted, savvy audience right there and no one wants to invest because the advertisers don't know for sure how many people they reach. More to the point, if they have a game they want to pimp they're better off just making sure the crew wants to talk about it of their own volition.

Here's the thing I don't understand. In spite of the fluctuating and irregular metrics of podcasts, aren't radio and TV really no more predictable because other than things like Neilsen samples (which most people think are inaccurate to put it politely)? I suppose there's a greater assumed install base that creates some built-in value but since podcasts can be more specifically tracked and cost a lot less to advertise in, doesn't that create value of its own? I'm obviously no media expert which is why I ask, I just find it odd that scattershot metrics are OK in some mediums and not others.

Don't I know it. It's funny to think you can have this super targeted, savvy audience right there and no one wants to invest because the advertisers don't know for sure how many people they reach. More to the point, if they have a game they want to pimp they're better off just making sure the crew wants to talk about it of their own volition.

Here's the thing I don't understand. In spite of the fluctuating and irregular metrics of podcasts, aren't radio and TV really no more predictable because other than things like Neilsen samples (which most people think are inaccurate to put it politely)? I suppose there's a greater assumed install base that creates some built-in value but since podcasts can be more specifically tracked and cost a lot less to advertise in, doesn't that create value of its own? I'm obviously no media expert which is why I ask, I just find it odd that scattershot metrics are OK in some mediums and not others.

My uninformed guess is that the guys in charge of buying ad time are old-school and not too open to new advertising venues. TV, radio, billboards are all known commodities by comparison.

I bought the Annual subscription. I do agree that it's probably not a great value for the features you actually get, but I'm more than happy to support what GiantBomb and Whiskey Media are doing. I've easily gotten $50 of enjoyment out of GB and Screened, so I'm happy to be able to pay a little bit to keep it coming.

As far as splitting the Bombcast goes, when my subscription expires I'll probably just wind up banking the first half and waiting until the second half is out before listening to it. I don't really have a huge problem with that. One of the problems with a lot of video game podcasts run by pro video game journalists is that they're always talking about stuff that's not out yet or that's just barely out and thus I likely haven't played yet, so running a week behind is in some ways preferable for me.

It's one of the reasons why I love the fact that GWJ's "whatcha been playin'" section is entitled "Games You Can Play Right Now." (-: I much prefer listening to talk about games that I've had a chance to try out so that I can compare my experience to that of the podcasters.

I've started listening to the Bombcast recently and personally I'd rather listen to it split up. I think it runs a little too long. Outside of the Quick Looks I don't often go to their site for content either.

I bought an annual membership. I value the podcasts I listen to. They're worth more than $50 a year to me, and I'd gladly pay for them. Sure, pay walls might keep me from trying some new stuff, but the stuff I know I like, I'll pay for.

Unfortunately, bending to the wishes of your customers is just delaying the trip to bankruptcy court.

"You realise that you're questioning the internal logic of a game in which a fat plumber rides a dinosaur in space?" Jonman

Admittedly, I was one of those who went over to the GB site (my name over there is mikemau5) and posted that I was quite unhappy with the decision to split the Bombcast up into two parts for non-subscribers and basically said "f*ck it, I'm done". But I think that $5/mo is worth contributing to them, and so I pulled out the ol' credit card and blam!